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More "Tongs" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their drunkenness and warned them of the day of the Lord that was coming upon all the wicked; exhorting them to leave their wickedness and to turn to the Lord in time. While I was thus speaking to them the priest and the clerk broke out into a rage, and got up the tongs and fire-shovel at us, so that had not the Lord's power preserved us we might have been murdered amongst them. Yet, for all their rudeness and violence, some received the truth then, and have stood ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... avalanches. The cars will be roped together. Then, if one falls, it'll take the other with it. Will somebody pass me the grape-tongs? ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... that account," remarked Jonas. "If you were in the water, a cork jacket would be of no more use to you than a pair of curling tongs to Cuffy, the black cook. But don't try to swim. TREAD WATER lustily with those mud scows (pointing to his feet) and you will never go to ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... The silver tongs dropped one, two, three—and a cherry tartlet. "I don't know why you're giving me all these," she said, and nearly smiled. "I shan't eat them; ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... tell you what I'll do. He shall ask me again. In spite of those idiots at Richmond he shall kneel at my feet,—necklace or no necklace; and then,—then I'll tell him what I think of him. Marry him! I would not touch him with a pair of tongs." As she said this, she was holding her ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... in his mind, he struck match after match and peered about the cellar. Against the opposite wall he noticed a stick with curved tongs on one end of it, manipulated by a thin metal bar running to the other end. It was one of those handy implements used to lift cans down from high shelves. It stood among other articles, a rake, an old broom, but the deft little mechanical hand ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... this woman give you birth?' and I said, 'Yes.' The judge said, 'did anybody tell you to say all this?' and I said 'No,' because my mistress had instructed me. She taught me on shipboard what to say if I was taken to court. She beat me with thick sticks of firewood. She beat me with the fire tongs. One day she took a hot flatiron, removed my clothes and held it on my naked back until I howled with pain. (The scab was on her back when she came to the Mission.) My forehead is all scars caused by her throwing heavy pieces of wood at ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... with you, Blaine. We know quite well who the murderer is. At the right moment we shall land on him hammer and tongs. But you see—we need to choose the right moment, for political reasons. Now—technically speaking—all evidence in criminal cases ought to go to the police, and the police might act too ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... your sowls, To see the butthered rowls, The sugar-tongs and sangwidges and craim galyore, And the muffins and the crumpets, And the band of hearts and thrumpets, To celebrate ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was therefore fashioned into a hammer, by widening a hole which it happened to have about the middle, with one of the largest nails. A large pebble served for an anvil, and a couple of rein-deer horns served for the tongs. ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... got into my boat with much difficulty. There were several muskets in the cabin, and a great powder-horn, with about four pounds of powder in it; as for the muskets, I had no occasion for them, so I left them, but took the powder-horn. I took a fire-shovel and tongs, which I wanted extremely, as also two little brass kettles, a copper pot to make chocolate, and a gridiron; and with this cargo, and the dog, I came away, the tide beginning to make home again - and the same evening, about an hour ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... The humorist and satirist lost no opportunity of deriding the new fashion and its followers. The tobacco merchant was an important person in London of James the First's time—with his Winchester pipes, his maple cutting-blocks, his juniper-wood charcoal fires, and his silver tongs with which to hand the hot charcoal to his customers, although he was shrewdly suspected of adulterating the precious weed with sack lees and oil. It was his custom to wash the tobacco in muscadel and grains, and to keep it moist by wrapping it in greased leather, and oiled rags, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... post. His skin looked like a blown bladder arter some of the air had leaked out, kinder wrinkled and rumpled like, and his eye as dim as a lamp that's livin' on a short allowance of ile. He put me in mind of a pair of kitchen tongs, all legs, shaft and head, and no belly; a real gander-gutted lookin' critter, as holler as a bamboo walkin' cane, and twice as yaller. He actilly looked as if he had been picked off a rack at sea, and dragged through a gimlet hole. He was a lawyer. Thinks I, ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... fire, except an old pair of tongs, which travels through the house, and is likewise employed to take the meat out of the pot, for ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... Gregory and Mrs. Weguelin sat on their chairs, and Hortense sat on her bench, tea was brought and a table laid, behind whose whiteness and silver Hortense began slight offices with cups and sugar tongs. She looked inquiry at her visitors, in answer to which Mrs. Gregory indicated acceptance, and Mrs. Weguelin refusal. The beauty of Hortense's face had strangely increased since the arrival of these two visitors. It shone resplendent behind the silver and the white cloth, and her movement, ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... there was a commotion amongst the people. Not even the dog would touch the accursed thing. So at last the sheriff called for a pair of tongs, to seize the sticks himself and fling them into the fire. Whereupon his wife screamed to prevent him; but the brave sheriff, strengthening his heart, advanced and touched them; whereupon Fixlein, as if he had never known until now what his master wanted, made a grab at them, but the sheriff gave ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... hand-painted fans? What an interesting fact!" She sits down on the sofa behind the little table on which the maid arranges the tea, and pours out a cup. Then, with her eyes on Mr. Bemis: "Cream and sugar both? Yes?" Holding a cube of sugar in the tongs: "How many?" ...
— Five O'Clock Tea - Farce • W. D. Howells
... injury, and in its terror fluttered up into the milk-pan, so that the milk spurted down into the room. The woman clapped her hands, at which the Duckling flew down into the butter-tub, and then into the meal-barrel and out again. How it looked then! The woman screamed, and struck at it with the fire-tongs; the children tumbled over one another, in their efforts to catch the Duckling; and they laughed and screamed finely! Happily the door stood open, and the poor creature was able to slip out between the shrubs into the newly fallen snow; and ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... lived in Montana ever sence he was five years old, and not having sighted salt water in all that time, he don't know but what there IS such critters as "Labrador mack'rel," and he goes at 'em, hammer and tongs. When we come ashore we had eighteen dogfish, four sculpin and a skate, and Stumpton was the happiest loon in Ostable County. It was all we could do to keep him from cooking one of them "mack'rel" with his own hands. If Jonadab hadn't steered him out of the ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a pair of tongs, like sugar-tongs. He put three pieces of charcoal in the tiny stove. Take put water in the kettle. Soon the water began to boil! Real steam came out ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... In his rage he forgot all the restraints of etiquette. He seized from the fireplace the tongs, and would have broken the head of the minister had not Madame de Maintenon rushed between them. The king ordered a messenger immediately to be dispatched to countermand the order. He declared that if a single house were burned, the head ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... right. The one good thing about Christmas is it doesn't last long." He leaned forward and with the tongs turned a smoldering log. "But it's incomprehensible how a woman with a home can keep up this everlasting going to other people's houses. To-morrow ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... promiscuous amourist; stringing his lute (God forgive him!) on a Sunday, that is the outstanding figure in the Diary. Mr. Pepys attracts us, however, in a host of other aspects—Mr. Pepys whose nose his jealous wife attacked with the red-hot tongs as he lay in bed; Mr. Pepys who always held an anniversary feast on the date on which he had been cut for the stone; Mr. Pepys who was not "troubled at it at all" as soon as he saw that the lady who had spat on him in the theatre ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... "You are afraid I'm right. And why are you afraid? Because you are one of those men who take a cynical view of woman. You want woman to be a mere lump of sugar, content to be left in a bowl until it pleases you in your high-and-mightiness to take her in the tongs and drop her into the coffee of your existence, to sweeten what would otherwise not please your taste—and like most men you prefer two ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... a horse, who drew them right up to the wide stone hearth. But we did not use Lord Beaconsfield for this work. For one thing, he would have been too big to get through the door; besides, we were strong, and liked the job. We had two pairs of ice-tongs, and we would put on our rubber boots, and take the tongs, and go out into the snow, and fasten to a log—one at each end—and drag it across Captain Ben's iron door-sill, and lift it in and swing it across the stout andirons with a skill ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the blessed lingo, but by good luck I tumbled across an artist chap who turned out a good sort, and offered to interpret for me. So we had the landlord in, and I ordered a bottle of his best wine—nasty greasy stuff it was—and we went at it hammer and tongs. Pretty soon I had found out everything ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... proceeded, glowing with mutual affection, till they reached the edge of the campus, when the others saw the Twins suddenly loose their hold on each other, and fall to, hammer and tongs, over some quarrel whose beginning the ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... a sort of remorse; he seized the tongs, and rescued a last fragment of the letter from ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... time later that night, moved noiselessly over the heavy rugs in the boudoir of the princess suite, next to armory hall on the second story of Strathorn House. Glancing nervously about her from time to time, the woman trimmed a candle here and set another there; then lifted with ponderous brass tongs a few coals and placed them on the smoldering bed in the delicately tinted fireplace. After which she stood before it in the attitude of one who is waiting though not with stolid and ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... reindeer killed that day. Meanwhile, the cave fire had been replenished with dry wood and there had been formed a wide bed of coals, upon which were cast numerous stones of moderate size, which soon attained a shining heat. A sort of tongs made of green withes served to remove the stones, one after another, from the mass of coal, and drop them in with the meat and water. Within a little time the water was fairly boiling and soon there ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... me five shillings, Say the bells of St. Helen's. When will you pay me? Say the bells of Old Bailey. When I grow rich, Say the bells of Shoreditch. Pokers and tongs, Say the bells of St. John's. Kettles and pans, Say the bells of St. Ann's. Half-pence and farthings, Say ...
— The Only True Mother Goose Melodies • Anonymous
... out of the fire on to the strip of carpet lying across the hearth, and a pungent odour of burning wool arose. But Bruff stooped down and using his hardened fingers as tongs, picked up the cinder and tossed it ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... negro songs; Pussy by the hearth-side Romping with the tongs; Chestnuts in the ashes Bursting through the rind; Red leaf and gold leaf Rustling down the wind; Mother "doin' peaches" All the afternoon,— Don't you think that autumn's ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... all means send for the tongs," answered Denise, taking the letter with a mock air ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... for protecting children from their machinations. The mother's presence, the tongs placed cross-ways on the cradle, the early baptism of the child, were all preventives. In the Western Isles of Scotland fire carried round a woman before she was churched, and round the child until he was christened, ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... the bolts and bars were gone! Too late the warnings returned upon the king's mind, and he knew it was he alone who was sought. He tried to escape by the windows, but here the bars were but too firm. Then he seized the tongs, and tore up a board in the floor, by which he let himself down into the vault below, just as the murderers came rushing along the passage, slaying on their way a page named ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... beheld within the well a very large lizard residing within it. The young men made strong and repeated efforts for rescuing the lizard from that situation. Resembling a very hill in size, the lizard was sought to be freed by means of cords and leathern tongs. Not succeeding in their intention the young men then went to Janardana. Addressing him they said, 'Covering the entire space of a well, there is a very large lizard to be seen. Notwithstanding our best efforts we have not succeeded in rescuing it from that situation.' Even this was what ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... by the fier-side doth sit, One freezing in an Ague fit. Another poking in't with th' tongs, Still ready to cough up his lungs Here sitteth one that's melancolick, And there one singing in a frolick. Each one hath such a prety gesture, At Smithfield fair would yield a tester. Boy reach a pipe cries he ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... a figure of St. Dunstan, who regularly strikes the quarters of every hour by clock-work, and who holds in his hand a pair of tongs—the same I suppose as those with which he was wont to pull the devil by the nose, in their ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... As another glance he throws: "'Gainst the shield I ill shall fight Which the tongs ...
— Ulf Van Yern - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... everything had to be made especially for him after his own description—handcuffs, collars and belts, chains, branding irons, a block and fall, muzzles of different sizes, corkscrew picket-pins for holding the turn of a rope, and a nondescript article shaped like a huge pair of tongs, for which I feel sure there is no name in any trade, but which looked to be a handy implement for clamping the jaws of a beast. To have these things made according to specifications took time and an endless amount of running about. Besides, there was the more ordinary part of the equipment ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... the lid of a box, with many chips, and a handsome razor that had been used as a knife. There were bottles of soda-water, sugar, pieces of lemon, and the traces of an effervescent beverage. Two piles of books supported the tongs, and these upheld a small glass retort above an argand lamp. I had not been seated many minutes before the liquor in the vessel boiled over, adding fresh stains to the table, and rising in fumes with a disagreeable odor. Shelley snatched the glass quickly, and ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... that longer; hooked together are the ribs in thee; nor, methinks, have I ever seen such tongs as thou bearest about, and I deem thee to be scarce ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... if he kills them, nothing is added to his usual pay; yet such is the fury of their desperation, that three out of four are of necessity destroyed in the attempt to secure them, though the officers are provided with instruments like large tongs, or pincers, to lay hold of them without coming within the reach of their weapon. Those who happen to be taken alive are generally wounded, but they are always broken alive upon the wheel, and if the physician who is appointed to examine their wounds thinks them likely to be mortal, the punishment ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... find spinning-wheels, which, like old chairs, tall clocks, and warming-pans, have now become objects of curiosity and interest to those who take a fancy to antique articles. It has become fashionable to have these things to adorn our Queen Anne houses. And brass andirons and shovels and tongs have come into request, so that we may enjoy the luxury of an open wood fire, which, to our mind, is one of the most cheerful things in this world. Some one has remarked "that to be well-dressed gives a feeling of satisfaction ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... born in London in 1788. His father was a reckless, dissipated spendthrift, who deserted his wife and child. Mrs. Byron convulsively clasped her son to her one moment and threw the scissors and tongs at him the next, calling him "the lame brat," in reference to his club foot. Such treatment drew neither respect nor obedience from Byron, who inherited the proud, defiant spirit of his race. His accession to the peerage in 1798 did not tend to tame ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... all means," he spoke with good-natured emphasis. "Get another fellow, and go after adventures and romances and that kind of thing! Go after 'em hammer and tongs! By George, that's what I'd do if I were a ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... ball can best be inserted in the fire or other situation where an observation is desired, and withdrawn for immersion by means of long, slender tongs, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... trouble was required to get a stove, wood, linen, and who knows what else. Though for a month I have believed myself established, I am always on the eve of being so. Here a cart takes five hours to go three leagues; judge of the rest. They require two months to manufacture a pair of tongs. There is no exaggeration in what I say. Guess about this country all I do not tell you. For my part I do not mind it, but I have suffered a little from it in the fear of seeing my children suffer much ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... resignedly with tongs and teapot, and as Mrs. Moran bit into her first sandwiches, and the Haviland girls moved away at a word from their mother, Rachael raised her eyes and met Warren ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... with you," said Mr. Glanbally, — "but I've been riding till I'm as stiff as the tongs — Winthrop, are you too tired to walk home with this young lady? — as her father has brought you a letter you might do ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... une paire de tongs,—et—curly moi un peu," Mr. Foker said, in an easy manner; and the valet, wondering whether his master was in love or was going masquerading, went in search of the articles,—first from the old butler who waited ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... opinion. Before seating himself in his deep chair, whose rounded back screened him from draughts, he looked round him doubtfully, examined his dressing-gown with a hostile expression, shook off a few grains of snuff, carefully wiped his nose, arranged the tongs and shovel, made the fire, pulled up the heels of his slippers, pulled out his little queue of hair which had lodged horizontally between the collar of his waistcoat and that of his dressing-gown restoring it to its perpendicular position; ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... proud of her hand, viewed as one of the meritorious details of her figure. She took up the sugar-tongs with suavity and grace; she dropped the sugar into the cup with a youthful pleasure in ministering to the minor desires of her illustrious guest. "It is so good of you, Father, to honor me in this way," she said—with the appearance of sixteen super-induced ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... without any beauty, even without the beauty of ugliness. He was ugly, that was all; nothing more nor less; in short, he was uglily ugly. He was not humpbacked, nor knock-kneed, nor pot-bellied; his legs were not like a pair of tongs, and his arms were neither too long nor too short, and yet, there was an utter lack of uniformity about him, not only in painters' eyes, but also in everybody's, for nobody could meet him in the street without turning to look ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... ferret off, but never touched the rabbit. I took the rabbit with a pair of tongs; the others had handled their baits and pug crept round 'em and nosed the trick. I poured twenty drops of croton oil into the little hole ferret had made in bunny's head, and I dropped him in the grass near pug's track. Next morning rabbit had been drawn ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... did nothing whatever at providing a secret retreat in case of fire, though I had a plan in mind which I thought was good. Worst of all, I left the Winchesters about here and there without any particular attempt at hiding them. But I kept at the tunnel hammer and tongs. ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth
... what is to be conserved. Papa said after dinner yesterday that everything English ought to be maintained. Everett said that according to that we should have kept the Star Chamber. "Of course I would," said papa. Then they went at it, hammer and tongs. Everett had the best of it. At any rate he talked the longest. But I do hope he is not a Radical. No country gentleman ought to be ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... an oblong box of curious pattern, and opened it. "What upon earth—Margaret, what are these? Grape-scissors? Asparagus-tongs? They don't ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... jewelled and engine-turned, and possessed of the horizontal lever-escape-movement, and all sorts of things, she would buy for me if she could afford it; and we pick out the spoons and forks, fish-slices, butter-knives, and sugar-tongs, we should both prefer if we could both afford it; and really we go away as if we had got them! Then, when we stroll into the squares, and great streets, and see a house to let, sometimes we look up at it, and say, how would THAT ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... he awful?" said Roxanne; but there was the kind of pride in her voice and the kind of look in her eyes that I would have if I had a little brother like that, even if he was so dirty that he would have to be handled with tongs. ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... more molds, the next operation is that of melting and pouring. An ordinary cast-iron glue-pot makes a good crucible and can be easily handled by a pair of tongs, made out of steel rod, as shown in the sketch. In order to hold the tongs together a small link can be slipped on over the handle, thus holding the ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... clique). Rav Nechemiah said, in his father's name, also fire and the mule. Rav Yosheyah, in his father's name, added also the ram which Abraham offered up instead of Isaac, and the Shameer. Rav Yehudah says the tongs also, etc. ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... tell you much about it," said Phil. "We were on our way to the car when a couple of men suddenly jumped out from a fence corner and went at us hammer and tongs. That's when we got these beauty spots. If we had seen the fellows coming we might not ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... tablespoon) is put on all dishes and a fork of large size is added for fish, meat, salad and any vegetables or other dishes that are hard to help. String beans, braised celery, spinach en branche, etc., need a fork and spoon. Asparagus has various special lifters and tongs, but most people use the ordinary spoon and fork, putting the spoon underneath and the fork, prongs down, to hold the stalks on the spoon while being removed to the plate. Corn on the cob is taken with the fingers, but is never served at a dinner party. A galantine ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... wench squeak a defiance from an upper window, from which she bolted with great rapidity as soon as she had thus represented the valor of the establishment, and when next seen it was in the cellar, wedged in between two barrels of beer. The men went at it hammer and tongs, and in twenty-four hours a good many cannon-balls traversed the building, a great many stuck in the walls like plums in a Christmas pudding, the doors were blown in with petards, and the principal defenders, with a few wounded Roundheads, ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... had supposed to be in the back kitchen, but who was in reality a few steps behind him, mending something which had gone wrong in her loom, ran forward suddenly to the fire, and bending over her griddle somehow promptly threw down the tongs, making a clatter and commotion, in the midst of which the cakes caught, and old 'Lias moved from the ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... knew that enemy to the comfort of the domestic hearth, who could not keep his hands for a moment from the fire-irons. Perhaps he might be justified if he said that they had been very much troubled of late in that House by gentlemen who could not keep their fingers from poker and tongs. But there had now fallen upon them a trouble of a nature much more serious in its effects than any that had come or could come from would-be reformers. A spirit of personal ambition, a wretched thirst for office, a hankering after the power and privileges of ruling, ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... of no plural, in fact, or in use; as, chaos, universe, fitness, immortality, immensity, eternity. Others admit of no singular; as, scissors, tongs, vitals, molasses. These words probably once had singulars, but having no use for them they became obsolete. We have long been accustomed to associate the two halves of shears together, so that in speaking of one whole, we say shears, and of apart, half of a shears. But of some words ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... plastic bowls, with elastic thread covers through which they could see and choose the particular morsels they fancied next. The threads stretched to let through the forks they ate with. But Brent used a rather more practical pair of tongs in a businesslike manner. ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... I liked to take a rather rough fanning job, I could get myself stuck likewise. That part of the offer I did not accept, and I think by what has since happened, that my refusal was judgematical. Moreover, the very next day I heard of a more congenial matter in the hammer-and-tongs department of my august profession. A village blacksmith, a horny-handed son of toil, generously offered to feed and lodge me for as long as I liked to stop, in return for my services in his forge. The offer was the more magnanimous in that he was not in any ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... aimed a blow at my head with a sword. Fortunately the bullet missed me, finding its billet in the body of the man whose throat I still grasped, while I managed to catch the blow of the other fellow on my own blade; and in a moment we were at it "hammer and tongs"—that is to say, the swordsman and myself, the other fellow making a dash at me now and then, aiming fierce blows at me with the butt-end of his pistol, until, in self-defence, I seized my opportunity and cleft his skull with my cutlass at ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... gold tea scoop of ancient pattern, probably once a baby's pap spoon. There were also apostle-spoons, and little silver canoes and other devices to hold cigarettes and ashes; little mysterious boxes for the toilette, to hold the tongs for curling hair, and hair-pins; mirror frames, and even chair-backs and ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... and Mother—me a-twistin' at the prongs Of a green scrub-ellum forestick with a vicious pair of tongs, And Mother sayin', "David! David!" in a' undertone, As though she thought that ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... who will be properly surprised to meet him, you naturally approve of that young man, and wish him Staff Appointments, and take an interest in his welfare, and, as the proper time comes, give them sugar-tongs or side-saddles, according ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... her gaze from his, and suddenly his crisp hair caught her eyes. Surely—surely it was curled with tongs! A kind of spasm of amusement was set free in her heart, and, almost inaudibly, the words escaped her lips: "Une technique merveilleuse!" His eyes wavered; he uttered a little gasp; his lips fell apart. Gyp walked across the room and put her hand on the bell. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... woman at Margate whom I suspected for the same reason. No powder on her nose—that proved to be the correct solution. How can you build on such a quicksand? Their most trivial action may mean volumes, or their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin or a curling tongs. Good-morning, Watson." ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... manner, and time and space are annihilated in the action most bewilderingly. Thus, no sooner does Herr Tristrant volunteer to meet Morhold der Held to settle the question of "Curnewelshland's" tribute to "Irland" than the two are at it hammer and tongs on an island in the ocean. All the other incidents of the old legends follow as fast as they are mentioned. Tristrant saves his head in Ireland when discovered as the slayer of Morhold by ridding the country ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... steel is in the smithy drown'd; The grot with beaten anvils groans around. By turns their arms advance, in equal time; By turns their hands descend, and hammers chime. They turn the glowing mass with crooked tongs; The fiery work ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... remain fasting. She slowly pulled on her new stockings and stretched out her hand to the bench on which the white slippers lay. She took off her sleeping-jacket and her little skirt and stood waiting in her shift. When the tongs were well warmed, Mam'selle Julie seized the little paper twists in the hot iron and opened them out. From each fold a curled tress came rolling down; and at last, combed out and bound up with blue-silk ribbon, it all stood about her head in a light mist of pale-gold silk, like a wreath of ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... excess. There must be some mistake about it. I cannot imagine the infinite Creator of all the shining worlds giving a recipe for hair-oil. Do you believe that the real God came down to Mount Sinai with a lot of patterns for making a tabernacle-patterns for tongs, for snuffers, and such things? Do you believe that God came down on that mountain and told Moses how to cut a coat, and how it should be trimmed? What would an infinite God care on which side he cut the breast, what color the fringe was, or how the buttons were ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... do you take me for—a coleopterist? Ma conscience, laddie, these insects are no interest to me. I wouldn't touch one with a pair o' tongs. It's moths and butterflies for Skipper Mackintosh—the dainty fluttering things that are like bits o' sunshine and beams o' the moonlight. Beetle? Speak not to me the name o' thae things ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... long in the house adjoining to yours? Or, supposing a beneficent jury (beneficent to him) finds this to be no legal nuisance, has he a right to play it ill? Or, because juries, when tipsy, will wink at anything, does the privilege extend to the jew's-harp? to the poker and tongs? to the marrowbones and cleavers? Or, without ranging through the whole of the Spectator's culinary music, will the bagpipes be found within benefit of jury law? War to the knife I say, before we'll submit to that. And ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... fire grew larger, the heap of ashes rose higher and higher—a thick bed of blackened leaves among which ran millions of sparks. But it was a long, a never-ending task; for when several pages were thrown on at a time, they would not burn; it was necessary to move them and turn them over with the tongs; the best way was to stir them up and then wait until they were in a blaze, before adding more. The women soon grew skilful at their task, and the work progressed at ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... him, you remember," she said. "I was going to take his head off. Then when it came to it, and I had told him what I thought of him and the whole disgraceful scrape he had got me into—Oh, I went for him, hammer and tongs! Incidentally, I made him tell me what it was I had said. Pretty bad, wasn't it!—Well, do you know, he cried, he felt so. He just cried on his knees, and didn't try to get rid of any of the blame. All he wanted ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... smell is in the school-house lane; The clover bees are sick with evening heats; A few old houses from the window-pane Fling back the flame of sunset, and there beats The throb of oars from basking oyster fleets, And clangorous music of the oyster tongs Plunged down in deep bivalvulous retreats, And sound of seine drawn home with ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... with bars which were something like tongs, except that they had only one handle; and they rolled it until the big end of the log was just over ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... difference what she was doing, she would just lay that work down and light out. I never see such a woman. And you could hear her whoop to Jericho. You couldn't get her to take a-holt of one of them with the tongs. And if she turned over and found one in bed she would scramble out and lift a howl that you would think the house was afire. She disturbed the old man so that he said he could most wish there hadn't ever been no snakes created. Why, after every last snake had been gone clear out of the house ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and as we were without Cowan we were in the same mental condition. It was hammer and tongs from that time on. I don't know that there was any intention to put players out of business, but there was not ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... fighting at the point for a minute or two. Good old-fashioned cut and thrust, hammer and tongs, like cutting out a ship. Tom Strachan found himself, he did not know how, with the hilt of his sword right up against a Soudanese breast-bone, the weapon having passed right through the man's body. But there was no expression ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... it reached the seat of my trousers. There it pinched, presumably to ascertain whether or no I were malingering, a most agonizing pinch like to that of a pair of blacksmith's tongs. So sharp was it that, although I did not stir, who was aware that the slightest movement meant death, it tore a piece out of the stout cloth of my breeches, to say nothing of a portion of the skin beneath. This seemed to astonish ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... warning her of the retribution in store for her if she remained with a man like the one on whom she had staked her future happiness. She had laughed at its contents and tossed it across the table to Dalton, who had read it with a smile, caught it between a pair of tongs and, lighting a match, held it over the flame until ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... wash-stand, and took out a box of tooth-powder, and then he got a glove out of another drawer, and then he wet the glove and dipped it in the tooth-powder. Some of the powder stuck to the glove, and with this he began to rub the brass tops of the tongs and poker. ...
— Aunt Fanny's Story-Book for Little Boys and Girls • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... place at the tea-tray, and was manipulating the curiously-shaped sugar-tongs rather carefully, when Malcolm looked at her a little searchingly. "Hurry up," he said severely; "how long do you suppose I am going to wait for your ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... ways. The nice retailer kept it in what were called lily-pots; that is, white jars. It was cut on a maple block; juniper-wood, which retains fire well, was used for lighting pipes, and among the rich, silver tongs were employed for taking up a coal of it. Tobacco was sometimes called "the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... following. Mr. Rule still lay still, till he should see his way further cleared. Then the apparition, who the whole time spoke none, took an effectual way to raise the doctor. He carried back the candles to the table and went to the fire, and with the tongs took down the kindled coals, and laid them on the deal chamber floor. The doctor then thought it time to rise and put on his clothes, in the time of which the spectre laid up the coals again in the chimney, and, going to the table, lifted the candles ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... hast to say, be it more or less, forget not to utter it in a low soft tone of voice. Silence, and whatever approaches it, weaves dreams of midnight secrecy into the brain: For this cause, if thou canst help it, never throw down the tongs and poker. ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... coiner in his presence; and when this mode of persuasion failed, they tortured Augusta himself. They stripped him naked. They stretched him face downwards on a ladder. They smeared his hips with boiling pitch. They set the spluttering mess on fire, and drew it off, skin and all, with a pair of tongs. They screwed him tightly in the stocks. They hung him up to the ceiling by a hook, with the point run through his flesh. They laid him flat upon his back and pressed great stones on his stomach. It was all in vain. Again they urged him to confess the part that he and the Brethren had played in the ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... any one more bewitching than this Montenegrin prince. Slender, fine, with crisp hair curled by the tongs, shaved "a week under" and pumice-stoned on that, bestarred with out-of-the-way decorations, he had the wily eye, the fondling gestures, and vaguely the accent of an Italian, which gave him an air of Cardinal Mazarin without his chin-tuft and moustaches. He was deeply versed in ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... read what they say about other people. There are about a dozen phrases which all come tumbling along together, like the tongs, and the shovel, and the poker, and the brush, and the bellows, in one of those domestic avalanches that everybody knows. If you get one, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... action of fluorine upon a solid substance, the following method of procedure is adopted. A preliminary experiment is first made, in order to obtain some idea as to the degree of energy of the reaction, by bringing a little of the solid, placed upon the lid of a platinum crucible held in a pair of tongs, near the mouth of the delivery tube of the preparation apparatus. If a gaseous or liquid product results, and it is desirable to collect it for examination, small fragments of the solid are placed in a platinum tube connected to the delivery tube by flexible platinum tubing or by a screw ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... the liver by its heat, draweth woose and juice and turneth it into blood, and serveth the body and members therewith, to the use of feeding. In the liver is the place of voluptuousness and liking of the flesh. The ends of the liver hight fibra, for they are straight and passing as tongs, and beclip the stomach, and give heat to digestion of meat: and they hight fibra, because the necromancers brought them to the altars of their god Phoebus and offered them there, and ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... which the sound of the firing reached us, proved that we were rapidly overhauling the contending squadrons, and some twenty minutes later we sighted the rearmost ships on both sides, blazing away at each other "hammer and tongs." Our own cruisers were to the southward of the Russian line, therefore Kamimura led his force to the northward of the enemy, thus placing the latter between two fires, at the same time signalling ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... moment up in the ward when Polly opened her box of candy. Such chocolates, such candied cherries and strawberries, with tiny tongs to lift them with, the children had never seen. They chose one apiece all round, which Miss Lucy said was enough for that day, and Polly carried the box down to the Doctor's office, that he might taste her sweets. It never occurred ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... went at it once more, "hammer-and-tongs." Thus far no one had been injured seriously enough to more than delay the game a few minutes, and, before the fatal seven had expired, the fellow who had been hurt was able to take his place in the line; so no substitutes were called on. Hugh ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... were up in the white-house kitchen, where were also the reek of scorched hair and the laughing expostulations of the Little Doctor and the boyish titter of Pink and Irish, who were curling laboriously the chaps of Miguel with the curling tongs of the Little Doctor and those ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... and threw himself into a seat, but he sat only a moment. Something seemed to be wanting. A restless impatience possessed him. He took up the tongs and begun to alter the disposition of the sticks of wood. He could not suit himself, and finally abandoned the fire to itself, after having filled the room with smoke. He went to the bookcase, and took down a book, and commenced reading. But presently ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... through hall-door). I suppose, HAUSTUS, you are persuading Miss WANGEL to start by the afternoon steamer? I have bought her a pair of curling-tongs, and a packet of hair-pins. The larger parcels ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 18, 1893 • Various
... weather wills." Bouchard bent toward the fire and with the aid of a pair of tongs drew forth the end of a broken spit, white with heat. This he plunged into a tankard of spiced port; and at once there arose a fragrant steam. He dropped the smoking metal to the floor, and drank deeply ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... elaborate type of furnishings, that began to flow into the colony, after the middle of the century. The houses were heated as customary in the seventeenth century by fireplaces, for numerous andirons, either brass or iron, are listed together with tongs and fire-shovels. Numerous candlesticks, some of brass, some of wire and others of silver, illuminated the rooms in the evening. Chairs, rare in the early part of the century, were not scarce by 1686, for they are mentioned as caned, of leather, or ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... no furnace, and no base metal, no bearded men in leathern aprons with tongs and things, but just a table with a table-cloth on it for supper, and a tin of salmon and a lettuce and some bottled beer. And there on a chair was the cloak and the hat of the mysterious stranger, and the two people ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit
... a chisel instead." Crossing to the fire I found my iron red-hot, and taking it betwixt two flat pieces of wood that served me for tongs I laid it upon my stone anvil, and fell forthwith to beating and shaping it with the hammer-back of my hatchet until I had beaten out a blade some two inches wide. Having cooled my chisel in the brook I betook me to sharpening ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... James Sherring and Thomas Hillary were there, James Sherring sat down in the chimney to fill a pipe of tobacco. He used the tongs to lift a coal to light his pipe, and by-and-by the tongs were drawn up the stairs and were cast upon the bed. The same night one of the maids left her shoes by the fire, and they were carried up into the chamber, and the old man's brought down and set in their places. As they were going upstairs ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... which the Chancellor might come to on a case brought into court on his advice, and which had been argued that afternoon. At last Frankpledge unwittingly fell foul of a favorite crotchet of Mortmain's—and at it they went, hammer and tongs, for nearly twenty minutes, (it had nothing whatever to do with the case they were consulting upon.) In the end, Mortmain of course adhered to his points, and Frankpledge intrenched himself in his books; each slightly yielded to the views of the other ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... a brazen altar, whose length was twenty cubits, and its breadth the same, and its height ten, for the burnt-offerings. He also made all its vessels of brass, the pots, and the shovels, and the basons; and besides these, the snuffers and the tongs, and all its other vessels, he made of brass, and such brass as was in splendor and beauty like gold. The king also dedicated a great number of tables, but one that was large and made of gold, upon which they set the loaves of God; and he made ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... Some nouns are used only in the singular form; as, hemp, flax, barley, wheat, pitch, gold, sloth, pride, honesty, meekness, compassion, &c.; others only in the plural form; as, bellows, scissors, ashes, riches, snuffers, tongs, thanks, wages, embers, ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... gun, seein' as we'd fired ours. There was a price on his head an' he'd made up his mind to fight. Jack grabbed him. He were stout as a lion an' tore 'way from the boy an' started to pullin' a long knife out o' his boot leg. Jack didn't give him time. They had it hammer an' tongs. Red Snout were a reg'lar fightin' man. He jest stuck that 'ere stump in the ground an' braced ag'in' it an' kep' a-slashin' an' jabbin' with his club cane an' yellin' an' cussin' like a fiend o' ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... machinery he installed in a new workshop which he built in the yard of Nance's cabin. Here he worked day and night at his blacksmith forge making the iron hinges, and irons, shovels, tongs, fire sets and iron work complete for a log bungalow of seven rooms which he was building on the sunny slope of the mountain which ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... the infusion in the flask rises to its boiling point, which is not sensibly over 212 deg. Fahr. Steam issues from the open neck of the flask, and the boiling is continued for five minutes. With a pair of small brass tongs, an assistant now seizes the neck near its junction with the flask, and partially lifts the latter out of the oil. The steam does not cease to issue, but its violence is abated. With a second pair of tongs held in one hand, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... meeting brands, out of whose wondrous baptism come the consecrate deeds of mankind. Go to China, and to any living soul you obtain no access, or next to none,—such disastrous roods of etiquette are interposed between. It is as if one very cordially shook hands with you by means of a pair of tongs or a ten-foot pole. Indeed, it is hardly a man that you meet; it is a piece of automatic ceremony. Nor is it in China alone that men may be found who can hardly be accredited with proper personality. As one dying may distribute his property in legacies ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... time, was John Boazman. He was a good man to his slaves. I was raised in the big-house, and helped as a servant-girl. My mistress smoked a pipe, and sometimes she would have me to get a red coal from de fire and put it in her pipe. I did dat wid tongs. I lived there a long time. I come to Newberry over 40 years ago and worked wid de white ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... this interesting topic at Chittenden's five years earlier (surely rather an advanced subject for little boys of twelve!), and some of the details still stuck in my head. A brilliant idea! Soon we were at it hammer and tongs; discussing Arius, Alexander, and Athanasius; the Council of Nicaea, Hosius of Cordova, homo-ousion and homoi-ousion; Eusebius of Nicomedia, and his ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... got more wrinkles in it than there are in a fake mermaid's tail. Do you know what kind of a game they've gone to work and rigged up on your friend, the human curling-tongs? The widder has got him to doin' chores again. It seems that she was always strong on keepin' him doin' chores. He's peckin' away at that pile of wood that's fitted and lays at the corner of the barn. He's luggin' it into the woodshed, and three ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... stared for a moment into the comfortable glow of the fire, and then discovering to his apparent surprise that his cigar had gone out, lighted it from a coal picked out with the tongs. ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... doing that, with a pot in one hand, and the tongs in the other, I am picking slugs out of the flower-beds and giving them a dose of boiling water, or lugging about a watering-pot. I do it energetically, but my heart is not in it, though the garden is grateful all the same, and is as nice a symbol of the French people ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... 1789-1879) now introduces him to a friend as "My most cherished and respectable friend, one who is better acquainted with Gypsy ways than the Chef de Bohemiens a Triana, one who is an expert whisperer and horse-sorcerer, and who, to his honour I say it, can wield hammer and tongs, and handle a horse-shoe, with the best of the smiths amongst the Alpujarras ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... the two youngest Kenway girls trooped into the kitchen, Popocatepetl was chasing a stray feather about the floor and in diving behind the big range for it, she knocked down the shovel, tongs and poker, which were standing against ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... to obtain a pony, cart, and certain tools, used by smiths and tinkers, I came to this place, where I amused myself with making horse-shoes, or rather pony-shoes, having acquired the art of wielding the hammer and tongs from a strange kind of smith—not him of Gretna Green—whom I knew in my childhood. And here I lived, doing harm to no one, quite lonely and solitary, till one fine morning the premises were visited by this young gentlewoman ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... later, when Paul opened the dining-room for her to pass out, she touched his shoulder affectionately and laughed. "Hammer and tongs to Sophie Zobraska! Oh, Paul, aren't you a bit ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... scrambled head first down this gentleman's macadamised road this morning, but if you want a tooth out I can use the tongs." ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... tell his honourableness that David Rossi and my wife are like brother and sister, and anybody who makes evil of that isn't stuff to take with a pair of tongs." ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... Dream spoke to Ivan, and his big hand held the hand of Anna. The railway ran through Bobruisk, and that evening they stood and looked at the shining rails that went out in the moonlight like silver tongs reaching out for a ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... of his mastership, or of clothing, linen, and furniture, in the hired lodgings and workshops, no small sum was requisite for the purchase of different kinds of tools—a lathe, an anvil, crucibles, dies, graving-implements, steel pins, hammers, chisels, tongs, scissors, &c.; and also for the purchase of brass and pinchbeck ware, copper, silver, lead, quicksilver, varnish, brimstone, borax, and other things indispensable for labour. He had also taken, without premium, an apprentice, the child of very poor people, to help him. He would have ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... as soon shaken hands with the Pope. He rather thought the rat was alive; and, taking the tongs, he received the beast at a safe distance, while Tom saw a smile of contempt pass over the young ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... legend, to determine the justice of the suspicion: Flinging the child on a dung-heap; putting in the oven; holding a red-hot shovel before the child's face; heating a poker red-hot to mark a cross on its forehead; heating the tongs red-hot to seize it by the nose; throwing on, or into, the fire; suspending over the fire in a pot; throwing the child naked on the glowing embers at midnight; throwing into lake, river, or sea (258. ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... alchemist whom fortune has allowed to get all his coveted materials and set to work at last with fire and melting pot—what he produces after all the talk of him and the like of him; why, you get pulvis et cinis—a man at the mercy of the tongs and shovel." In later life, however, Browning spoke of Wordsworth in a different tone. In a letter to Mr. Grosart, written Feb. 24, 1875, he said, "I have been asked the question you now address me with, and as duly answered, I can't ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... step when I heard the loud yelping of a dog followed by a string of oaths, and the office door opened, emitting a tall brawny man in shirt-sleeves with a very red face and close-cropped hair, who appeared holding out at arm's length a pair of tongs which gripped some repulsive-looking fronts and collars. On seeing me, he exclaimed, "Take care," and proceeded to drop the objects on a heap of rubbish below. We were both somewhat surprised at this apparition, but realised without difficulty that the office was still in the possession ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... ore—there is as good as the best, for all the forbidding appearance; There is the mine, there are the miners; The forge-furnace is there, the melt is accomplished; the hammersmen are at hand with their tongs and hammers; What always served and always serves is ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... refuge from all we abhorred in the harbor. To slight him was a sacrilege. But reverence to Joe Kramer was a thing unknown. "Show me," he said, in reply to my outburst, "a single thing he ever wrote that wasn't sentimental bosh!" And we went at it hammer and tongs. ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... gunpowder ran out of the great Panjandrum's boots when he played "Catch who catch can" on the immortal occasion of the gardener's wife marrying the barber. Now, Stephen French was a man of habitual self-restraint, and yet upon reading Ben Minthrop's letter he got up and—ignoring the poker and tongs—kicked the fire with a savagery that showed how little the best of us has softened by civilization. And yet the letter was distinctly friendly, even modest and grateful—without one kick-inspiring sentence. Stephen began pacing his library floor, hurling his thoughts ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... reached the seat of my trousers. There it pinched, presumably to ascertain whether or no I were malingering, a most agonizing pinch like to that of a pair of blacksmith's tongs. So sharp was it that, although I did not stir, who was aware that the slightest movement meant death, it tore a piece out of the stout cloth of my breeches, to say nothing of a portion of the skin beneath. ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... opium pills among the rubbish of the Jat's bundle. E23 gulped down a half handful. 'They are good against hunger, fear, and chill. And they make the eyes red too,' he explained. 'Now I shall have heart to play the Game. We lack only a Saddhu's tongs. ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... the Grecian lady of the bed-chamber, "that I am not called to a toilet where smiths' hammers and tongs are like to be the instruments most ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... hearth give out a dull glow which leaves the room in semi-darkness, yet lights up several objects by the hearthstone— namely, a heap of pine cones, some dried spice-wood bushes, a rude corn-popper, a snow-shovel, and a neatly-mended tongs. ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... you feel as if you'd just like to go at him with 'hammer and tongs'"—doubling up her fists and striking out suggestively right and left—"for being so crusty with you ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... covered market basket, a fish bag with a skewer through the top, and a small japanese basket, with a lid which was kept in place by the poker and tongs ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... existence, as a stone drops to the bottom of a well and is no more seen. Upon his immature shoulders rested all the worry of the goldsmith's business. He was master of Tresco's bench; the gravers and the rat-tail files, the stock-drills and the corn-tongs were under his hand for good or for evil. With blow-pipe and burnisher, with plush-wheel and stake-anvil he wrought patiently; almost bursting with responsibility, yet with anxiety gnawing at his heart. And the lies he told on behalf of his "boss"!—lies to men with unpaid accounts in their hands, ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... Hernandez arrives, and the whole story is gone over again. They go at it hammer and tongs, arguments and counter-arguments, reasons for and against, encouragements, and objections. The result is that Doctor Garcia Hernandez, whose learning seems not yet quite to have blinded or deafened him, thinks well of the scheme; thinks ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... you on to the haven of Pay, whether you make any effort, or not. Working by the hour tends to make one moral. A plumber working by the job, trying to unscrew a rusty, refractory nut, in a cramped position, where the tongs continually slipped off, would swear; but I never heard one of them swear, or exhibit the least impatience at such a vexation, working by the hour. Nothing can move a man who is paid by the hour. How sweet the flight of time seems to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... immediately reply. She had turned towards the fire, apparently for the purpose of raising a log of wood with the tongs, but in reality to give herself time for further reflection. What good would it do to tell him everything at once? She would some day be forced to tell it him, if she wished to have him entirely on her side; but there was no hurry, and she fancied that it would ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... to him) finds this to be no legal nuisance, has he a right to play it ill? Or, because juries, when tipsy, will wink at anything, does the privilege extend to the jew's-harp? to the poker and tongs? to the marrowbones and cleavers? Or, without ranging through the whole of the Spectator's culinary music, will the bagpipes be found within benefit of jury law? War to the knife I say, before we'll submit to that. ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... and accompanied by a jeering rabble, among whom the urchins and all the tag-rag and bobtail of the town mustered in great force, the figure was carried about by the flickering light of torches to the discordant din of shovels and tongs, pots and pans, horns and kettles, mingled with hootings, groans, and hisses. From time to time the procession halted, and a champion of morality accused the broken-down old sinner of all the excesses he had committed and for ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... side by side the almost ubiquitous Brown, whose ancestor was probably some Danish or Norwegian house-carle, proud of his name Biorn the Bear, and the ubiquitous Smith or Smythe, the Smiter, whose forefather, whether he be now peasant or peer, assuredly handled the tongs and hammer at his own forge. This holds true equally in New England and in Old. When I search through (as I delight to do) your New England surnames, I find the same jumble of names—West Saxon, Angle, Danish, Norman, and French-Norman likewise, many of primaeval and heathen antiquity, many ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... those balls. Tobacco was then, as now, adulterated in various ways. The nice retailer kept it in what were called lily-pots; that is, white jars. It was cut on a maple block; juniper-wood, which retains fire well, was used for lighting pipes, and among the rich, silver tongs were employed for taking up a coal of it. Tobacco was sometimes ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... to a brazier, and with a pair of small tongs lifted from it a glowing coal. With steady fingers she pushed aside the many sticks of incense in the great brass vessel before the shrine, and making a little grave among the ashes, she laid within the ...
— Little Sister Snow • Frances Little
... now broke into a boisterous 'hooray,' as keen for the wedding as a moment before they had been eident for the funeral. 'Bring oot the tangs!' they vociferated loudly. A pair of tongs were at once produced, and under the direction of the blacksmith the captive and the woman held hands, and took each other ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... throughout the meal. Not until coffee was served did the subject seem to be exhausted. But it was not, for after pouring a demi-tasse our hostess lifted a lump of sugar in the tongs, and looking me directly in the eye inquired: ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... affects a more light-hearted style. 'There is a review of your last book in the Scorpion', he says, 'which will amuse you. It is very malicious, and evidently the offspring of personal spite, but it is very clever.' Then you go down to your club, and take the thing up with the tongs, when nobody is looking, and make yourself very miserable; or you buy it, going home in the cab, and, having spoilt your appetite for dinner with it, tear it up very small, throw it out of window, and swear you ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... by the laboring bellows; the sound of water, rushing, gurgling, or musically dropping, heard in the pauses; the fiery shower of sparkles that flew when the trip-hammer fell; and the soft and glowing mass held by the smith's tongs with firm grasp, and turning to some form of use under his practised eye! How proud were the young amateur blacksmiths when the kind-hearted owner of the shop gave them liberty to heat and pound a bit of nail-rod, to mend a skate or a sled-runner, or sharpen a pronged fish- spear! Still ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... at each of his knees, where they were regaled at regular intervals with choice bits from his plate, the snapping of their solemn jaws expressing their thanks. A second scallop-shell was next lifted from the hearth with the tongs, and deposited sizzling hot on a plate beside the master, the aroma of the oysters filling the room. These having disappeared, as had the former one, together with the waffles and coffee, and the master's appetite being now on the ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... pulley, one upholding the column upon his hands, alternate with two Disciples, for whom their extended wings create a background. One of these is complemented by hammer and anvil, the other by furnace and tongs. Both share the column's weight on powerful arms. The imaginary figures show potential strength in repose, the human figures potent strength in action. The frieze in low relief is ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... live in a style befitting an officer of the crown. The knocker on the front door was so bright that Pompey could see his own white teeth and rolling eyeballs reflected from the shining brass. When through with the knocker he rubbed the fender, andirons, shovels, tongs, nozzle of the bellows, the hooks by the jams, candlesticks, snuffer, extinguisher, trays, and tinder-box, and wiped the dust from the glazed tiles of the hearth. It was the routine of every morning. Equally bright were the brass pots and pans in Phillis's realm. Pompey and ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... they had forced the blood out of them with exquisite pain. After this, he was carried into the strong room, where, besides the other irons which he had on, they fixed on his neck and hands an iron instrument called a collar, like a pair of tongs; and he being a large lusty man, when they screwed the said instrument close, his eyes were ready to start out of his head, the blood gushed out of his ears and nose, he foamed at the mouth, and he made several motions ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... have it in welcome. It will be so filthy when he pulls it off, I shall be tempted to take the tongs and put it in the fire. I cannot imagine, Lizabeth, what you want ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... the Moree bastion under as heavy a fire of round shot, grape, and canister, as I have ever in my life been peppered with. Our artillery dashed to the front, unlimbered, and opened upon the enemy, and at it they went, hammer and tongs. We had no infantry with us; all the infantry were fighting in the city. The enemy came out against us with large bodies of infantry and cavalry, and then began the fire of musketry. It was tremendous. ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... on the mantel-shelf and, when he had found it, lit it with a coal which he picked out of the fire with the tongs. ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... been told by the sweet soul herself," responded Nancy. "She wrote me a letter which would have put another girl in such a rage that she would never have touched any one of you again with a pair of tongs. But that's not Nancy King. For when Nancy loves a person, she loves that person through thick and thin, through weal and woe. I came to-day to try to find one of you dear girls. I have found you. What is the matter with you, ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... mind so much," she explained to Honey-Sweet, "I wouldn't mind so much if I could have taken out one teeny piece of chocolate with the darling little silver tongs. I haven't had a box of candy for months and months. And, oh! Honey-Sweet, I read just three chapters in that beautiful book, and now I'll never, never know what became of that ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... countless masses of forgotten and unresisting slaves? "Never!" replied what was bravest and worthiest of respect in the breast of this truly great-hearted man. The burning wrong which he felt against slavery had sunk in his mind below the reach of the grappling tongs of reason. It lay like a charge of giant powder, with its slow match attachment in the unplumbed depths of a soul which knew not fear; of a soul which was as hot with smouldering hate and rage as is a live ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... was ready to resign before this Burgoyne campaign, an' I wouldn't hev blamed him. He doesn't know how to git along without making enemies, for, when he has anything to do, he goes at it hammer and tongs no matter whose toes he treads on, but he gets it done, ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... his instructions, Levin took the tiller, and Jack Wonnell superserviceably got the terrapin tongs, and stood in the bow while the cat-boat skimmed down Monie Creek before a good breeze and a lee tide. The chain dredge for terrapin was thrown over the side, but the boat made too much sail for Wonnell to take more than one or two tardy animals with his tongs, as ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... friends, in that place they trimmed their candles with snuffers of gold, and they cut their fruits with knives of gold, and they washed their faces in basins of gold, and they scooped out the ashes with shovels of gold, and they stirred the altar fires with tongs of gold. Gold reflected in the water! Gold flashing from the apparel! Gold blazing in ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... have John wait, then take us from there to the South Station. Meanwhile we'll make sure that the little blue room is all ready for her. I put in my white enamel work-basket yesterday, and that pretty little blue case for hairpins and curling tongs that I bought at the fair. I want the room to look homey to her, ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... mouth had been cleaned, they beheld within the well a very large lizard residing within it. The young men made strong and repeated efforts for rescuing the lizard from that situation. Resembling a very hill in size, the lizard was sought to be freed by means of cords and leathern tongs. Not succeeding in their intention the young men then went to Janardana. Addressing him they said, 'Covering the entire space of a well, there is a very large lizard to be seen. Notwithstanding our best efforts we have not succeeded in rescuing it ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... we were alarmed with strange noises approaching us, and looking out we saw a number of people with frying pans, warming pans, tongs and pokers, beating, ringing, and making all possible din. We soon discovered them to be our neighbours of the next farm in pursuit of a swarm of bees which was hovering in the air over their heads. ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... he passed the window on horseback, and with a heavy sigh Mrs. Murray dropped her head on her hand, compressing her lips, and toying abstractedly with the sugar-tongs. ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... the talking, her mother listening with a half-absent air, as she picked up fragments of red-hot wood ember with the tongs, and piled them upon the brands. But the number of speeches that passed was very small in proportion to the meanings exchanged. Long experience together often enabled them to see the course of thought in each other's minds without ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... leathern bag, shaped much like a lady's work-bag, the strings of which he was obliged to draw in order to get at them. In his hand were his burning match and musket rest, and after discharging his piece he was obliged to defend himself with his sword. The match was fixed to the cock by a kind of tongs. Over the priming-pan was a sliding cover, which had to be drawn back with the hand before pulling the trigger. It was necessary to blow the ashes from the match, and take the greatest care that the sparks did not fall upon the priming. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Knee Buckles Fluke and Tongs, ruff and smooth Files, Bone Buckle Brushes, Freezing Punches, Binding Wire, Steel Top Thimbles, Cypher and Brilliant Button Stones, Cypher and Brilliant Ring Stones, Ring Sparks, Motto Ring Stones, Amethysts, Garnetts, Brilliant and Cypher Earing Stones, Amethysts ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... nothing very remarkable," said Mrs. Read, as the children seated themselves, one on each side of her, Prudy with her crocheting of violet and white worsted, and Dotty with nothing at all to do but play with the tongs. ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May
... and following. Mr. Rule still lay still, till he should see his way further cleared. Then the apparition, who the whole time spoke none, took an effectual way to raise the doctor. He carried back the candles to the table and went to the fire, and with the tongs took down the kindled coals, and laid them on the deal chamber floor. The doctor then thought it time to rise and put on his clothes, in the time of which the spectre laid up the coals again in the chimney, and, going to the table, lifted the candles and went to the ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... and catching up a stout hazel-stick, he bade Arvid stand on his guard. Nothing loth, Arvid Horn accepted the kingly challenge, and picking up a similar hazel-stick, he rapped King Charles' weapon smartly, and the two boys went at each other "hammer and tongs" in a lively bout ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... kick-off and the last period had begun, she speedily found that victory was not to be her portion. Mr. Robey sent in nearly a new team during that last ten minutes and the substitutes, fresh and eager, went at it hammer-and-tongs. Thacher enlisted fresh material, too, but it couldn't stop the onslaught that soon took the ball down the field to within close scoring distance of her goal. That Brimfield did not add another touchdown was only because ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... say, be it more or less, forget not to utter it in a low soft tone of voice. Silence, and whatever approaches it, weaves dreams of midnight secrecy into the brain: For this cause, if thou canst help it, never throw down the tongs and poker. ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... his cell, and, thrusting his head in at the window, disturbed the saint with obscene and blasphemous speeches, and the most frightful contortions of the features of his countenance. Dunstan at length, wearied out with his perseverance, seized the red-hot tongs with which he was engaged in some chemical experiment, and, catching the devil by the nose, held him with the utmost firmness, while Satan filled the whole neighbourhood for many miles round with his bellowings. Extraordinary as ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... are few and simple; and rude as the results of their labor may appear, it is surprising that they do so well with such imperfect appliances, which usually consist of the following articles: A forge, a bellows, an anvil, crucibles, molds, tongs, scissors, pliers, files, awls, cold-chisels, matrix and die for molding buttons, wooden implement used in grinding buttons, wooden stake, basin, charcoal, tools and materials for soldering (blow-pipe, braid of cotton rags soaked in grease, wire, ...
— Navajo Silversmiths • Washington Matthews
... which it happened to have in the centre, with the help of one of the large nails, they inserted the handle, and a round button at one end of the hook, made the face of the hammer. A large pebble served for an anvil, and a pair of reindeer's horns were the tongs. Such were the tools with which they fashioned the heads for two spears, which they polished and sharpened on stones, and then tied them fast with strips of reindeer-skin to thick sticks, with which they were supplied from the branches of trees which had ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... (or, as another version of the legend says, a horseshoe) when the Devil appeared before him. Instantly recognising his enemy, and being aware that with such a foe prompt measures alone are useful, St. Dunstan at once pulled his nose with the tongs, which chanced happily to be red hot. Wrenching himself free, the Devil leaped at one bound from Mayfield to Tunbridge Wells, where, plunging his nose into the spring at the foot of the Pantiles, he "imparted to the water its ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... acid on the shelf and picked up a pair of tongs. As he raised the cover of the glowing crucible a sudden transformation took place. The upper part of the laboratory blazed out fiercely, and in this light Pierre moved with gesticulating arms, the lower part of his body wholly hidden. He lifted the crucible, shook it for a moment with an oscillatory ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... somebody below to upset the slop-barrel and rain-water hogshead at the same time. Of course, you will attend to the mirror. The further it can be thrown, the more pieces will be made. If anybody objects, smash it over his head. Do not, under any circumstances, drop the tongs down from the second story; the fall might break its legs, and render the poor thing a cripple for life. Set it straddle of your shoulder, and carry it down carefully. Pile the bedclothes carefully on the floor, and throw the crockery out of the window. By the time you will have attended ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... must be screwed into position. Therefore, "can the fitting on the pipe be placed where it is laid out when this is considered?" must be one of the many questions a plumber should ask himself. Allowance must be made for the chain tongs to swing. Whenever possible, a fitting is made up on the pipe while the pipe ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble
... If it were a Westralian or a Kaffir I would n't touch it with a pair of tongs! It 's not as if I were going to put much in! [He suddenly bends above the papers as though magnetically attracted.] I ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... kept away so long as he was there. Another visitor, Angus MacAlister Ban, whose grandson told the tale, had more experience of the bocan's reality. "Something seized his two big toes, and he could not get free any more than if he had been caught by the smith's tongs. It was the bocan, but he did nothing more to him." Some of the clergy, too, as well as laymen of every rank, were witnesses to the pranks which the spirit carried on, but not even Donald himself ever saw him in any shape whatever. So famous did the affair become ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... enterprise. These outside activities were no hindrances to either pulpit or pastoral work; and, like that famous English preacher who felt that he could not have too many irons in the fire, I thrust in tongs, shovel, poker and all. The contact with busy life and benevolent labors among the poor supplied material for sermons; for the pastor of a city church must touch life at a great many points. Our domestic experiences ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... to 40 or 50 of water, or the same proportion of nitric). This extracts the gelatine from the surface of the ivory. Extreme cleanliness and absence of grease or soiling is most important; the ivory is not to be touched by the fingers, but removed from one vessel to another by wooden tongs, one pair to each colour. After treating with the acid, place the ivory in clean, cold, boiled water for some minutes. Water stains are used, but strained or filtered and warm or only tepid, for fear ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... whom I suspected for the same reason. No powder on her nose—that proved to be the correct solution. How can you build on such a quicksand? Their most trivial action may mean volumes, or their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin or a curling tongs. Good-morning, Watson." ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... were about ten workmen, making many-colored bracelets and glass rings, which varied in size from small finger rings to circlets through which you could easily put your arm. The workmen are provided with two metal rods and a pair of small tongs, and they ply these primitive instruments with wonderful dexterity. They work very hard, at least fifteen hours a day, ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... of the lid of a box, with many chips, and a handsome razor that had been used as a knife. There were bottles of soda-water, sugar, pieces of lemon, and the traces of an effervescent beverage. Two piles of books supported the tongs, and these upheld a small glass retort above an argand lamp. I had not been seated many minutes before the liquor in the vessel boiled over, adding fresh stains to the table, and rising in fumes with a disagreeable odor. Shelley snatched ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... tell us how the dwellers in the old city employed themselves, and how skilful they were in craftsmanship. Amongst other things we find axes, chisels, files for setting saws, hammers, a large plane, and other carpenters' tools; an anvil, a pair of tongs, and blacksmiths' implements; shoemakers' anvils, very similar to those used in our day, a large gridiron, a standing lamp, safety-pins, such as ladies use now, and many other useful and ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... were united by a close bond, the bond of that mutual admiration - or rather mutual hero-worship - which is so strong among the members of secluded families who have much ability and little culture. Even the extremes admired each other. Hob, who had as much poetry as the tongs, professed to find pleasure in Dand's verses; Clem, who had no more religion than Claverhouse, nourished a heartfelt, at least an open-mouthed, admiration of Gib's prayers; and Dandie followed with relish the rise of Clem's fortunes. ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... indulging a pet weakness. As I said, it is not merely the new and expensive toys that attract me; I think my weakest corner is where the penny boxes lie, the wooden tea-things (with the above-named flower in miniature), the soldiers on their lazy tongs, the ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of people in Manchester that you would not touch with a pair of tongs who, if they could be got hold of, would make far more earnest and devoted Christians than you are. The very strength of passion and feeling which has swept them wrong, rightly directed, would make grand saints of them, just as the very same conditions of climate which, at tropics, bring ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... they went at it once more, "hammer-and-tongs." Thus far no one had been injured seriously enough to more than delay the game a few minutes, and, before the fatal seven had expired, the fellow who had been hurt was able to take his place in the line; so no substitutes were called on. Hugh ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... is the savage now!" said Richard. "Hold!" to the servant who was bringing the red-hot irons in a pair of tongs. ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... moment the two cadets were at it "hammer and tongs." As they circled around, Codfish put out his foot, trying to trip Fred up. He failed in this, but a moment later Slugger Brown tried the trick with success, and the youngest Rover came down heavily and an instant later Nappy Martell landed ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... take me for—a coleopterist? Ma conscience, laddie, these insects are no interest to me. I wouldn't touch one with a pair o' tongs. It's moths and butterflies for Skipper Mackintosh—the dainty fluttering things that are like bits o' sunshine and beams o' the moonlight. Beetle? Speak not to me the name ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... room, you stepped to the left, let the flock pass on, and you were free. I did so, and found myself in the dark with my friend Mary and the other "devils" she had told me would be there. They were all armed, some with logs, others with tongs. I had nothing, but was bold enough to go to the school-room, get a poker, and return to my accomplices without ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... woman or his old lady, and it was a sight to see her chasing him across the street when she was in liquor, and boastful was Shovel of the way she could lay on, and he was partial to her too, and once when she was giving it to him pretty strong with the tongs, his father (who followed many professions, among them that of finding lost dogs), had struck her and told her to drop it, and then Shovel sauced his father for interfering, saying she should lick him as long as she blooming well ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... she wrenched her gaze from his, and suddenly his crisp hair caught her eyes. Surely—surely it was curled with tongs! A kind of spasm of amusement was set free in her heart, and, almost inaudibly, the words escaped her lips: "Une technique merveilleuse!" His eyes wavered; he uttered a little gasp; his lips fell apart. Gyp walked across the room and put her hand on the bell. She had lost her fear. Without ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... talisman, and flung it on an anvil, and furiously belaboured it with a heavy sledgehammer. He then pitched it in a furnace, and ordered his workmen to blow the coal into a fierce white heat. At the end of ten minutes he drew it out with a pair of tongs uninjured. With a cry of horror the workmen ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... to the fireplace. The shovel and tongs were just laughing at him; and though they composed their countenances immediately, he had caught the expression, and was excessively annoyed. Philosophy at length came to his aid, especially as the poker expressed only profound ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... 6 Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar; ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... fire. The doctor came round, took the tongs from her and did the work; after which he took a somewhat ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... Margate whom I suspected for the same reason. No powder on her nose—that proved to be the correct solution. How can you build on such a quicksand? Their most trivial action may mean volumes, or their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin or a curling-tongs. ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... And why are you afraid? Because you are one of those men who take a cynical view of woman. You want woman to be a mere lump of sugar, content to be left in a bowl until it pleases you in your high-and-mightiness to take her in the tongs and drop her into the coffee of your existence, to sweeten what would otherwise not please your taste—and like most men you prefer two or three lumps ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... Selkirk for Fort William and its furs. The man was so intoxicated that he could not write, so the afore-time governor, Miles MacDonell, writes out the bargain, which one could wish so great a philanthropist as Selkirk had not touched with tongs. Before midwinter of 1817 has passed, the De Meuron soldiers have crossed Minnesota and gone down Red River to Fort Douglas. One stormy night they scale the wall and bundle the Northwest usurpers out, bag ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... seized with a pair of tongs, thrown violently through the air, sending off a shower of white sparks as ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... bewildered. Either she had got out of the wrong side of bed, or I had,—or we both had. Here she was, assailing me, hammer and tongs, so far as I ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... never knew what it was, on a raw winter's evening, to sit before a bright wood fire, in a fire-place, with feet on fender and tongs in hand, listening to an animated conversation so mixed up of two languages that it was hard to tell which predominated. Not all the stateliness to be found in Mexican palaces, where, in a lordly tapestried halls, men and women sit ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... serving him with an after-dinner cup of tea, which she had brought into the drawing-room, and in putting the second lump of sugar into his saucer she paused again, thoughtfully, holding the little cube in the tongs. She was rather elaborately dressed for so simple an occasion, and her silken train coiled itself far out over the mossy depth of the moquette carpet; the pale blue satin of the furniture, and the delicate white and gold of the decorations, became ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... devils and brigands is, that devils are less black than they are said to be, and brigands more dirty than people suppose. The eight bullies, who packed themselves in a circle around us, were so filthy in appearance that I should have wished to give them my money with a pair of tongs. You might guess, with a little effort, that their caps had been red; but lye-wash itself could not have restored the original color of their clothes. All the rocks of the kingdom had stained their cotton shirts, and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... flitches, The fattest that ever were spent? They're the sides of the old committees Fed up in the Long Parliament. Here's a pair of bellows and tongs, And for a small matter I'll sell ye 'um, They are made of the presbyter's lungs, To blow up the coals of ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... did! There's a board on the backstairs that squeaks, and I heard it plain, while you was still at me, hammer and tongs," Lydia answered. "He was in the house not more'n two minutes, all told, and when I figured he was safely out, I went upstairs with you to show you the presents I'd give Nita after she burnt me, to prove I'd ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... have been struck out of the anvil, valuable possessions raised by the tongs, and superb houses, in a two-fold ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... goods and chattels, when Caesar came running up in great exultation, with a new cloak which he had been so lucky as to find lying before the door of a deserted house in the suburb. I took hold of the infected garment with a pair of tongs, and pitched it as far as I was able from the cart, to the great dismay of Caesar, who could not understand why I should throw away a thing which he assured me was well worth twenty dollars. We set off, and soon got out of the town. Not a living creature was to be seen ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... Great War of the Succession broke out, and the English army, commanded by the Great Duke of Marlborough, being allied with the Imperialists under Prince Eugene, and the forces of their High Mightinesses the Dutchmen, went at it Hammer and Tongs about the Spanish succession with King Lewis of France, I, who had always been fond of the army, resolved to give up pot-walloping and take another turn under canvas. It was, however, too late in the day for me to think of again taking the part of ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... always interested when they had a high tea in the sitting-room. The best old blue china was out, the loaf sugar, and the sugar-tongs that the little girl watched breathlessly lest her mother should lose the lump of sugar ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... eyes. Her own eyes quite sparkled with anger, for all the tears that were in them; and the tone in which she pronounced the name of the Herr Strauss suggested pointedly that he was one of the various unpleasant creatures which humanity disposes of with tongs. All this was so emphatic that Andreas suffered his hope to grow yet stronger; for now, certainly, one of these lovers was put safely out of ...
— An Idyl Of The East Side - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... time there was marked indignation in San Francisco caused by the report that the San Franciscans, in their deep-grounded prejudice, had discriminated against the Chinamen in the relief work. This report was groundless. The six Chinese companies, or Tongs, representing enormous wealth, had done such good work that but little had been necessary from the general relief committee, and, besides, the Chinese needed less. No Chinaman was treated as other than a citizen entitled to all rights, ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... And now will you come to a poor bachelor's assistance, and pour out tea, Mrs. Sylvester? And I'm very sorry, but I haven't got any sugar-tongs. I generally borrow Copal's, but the beggar's gone out and locked his door. You ladies will have to imagine ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... some hard fighting at the point for a minute or two. Good old-fashioned cut and thrust, hammer and tongs, like cutting out a ship. Tom Strachan found himself, he did not know how, with the hilt of his sword right up against a Soudanese breast-bone, the weapon having passed right through the man's body. But there was no expression ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... of the Latins, and weld it sevenfold, circle on circle. Some fill and empty the windy bellows of their blast, some dip the hissing brass in the trough. They raise their arms mightily in responsive time, and turn the mass of metal about in the grasp of their tongs. ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... savage at him, you remember," she said. "I was going to take his head off. Then when it came to it, and I had told him what I thought of him and the whole disgraceful scrape he had got me into—Oh, I went for him, hammer and tongs! Incidentally, I made him tell me what it was I had said. Pretty bad, wasn't it!—Well, do you know, he cried, he felt so. He just cried on his knees, and didn't try to get rid of any of the blame. All he wanted ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... Grant marching his army one hundred and fifty miles from its base, to get in rear of Vicksburg and cut off its relief. The very audacity of this plan may blind the careless thinker to its bad generalship; especially in view of the success that at last crowned its projector's hammer-and-tongs style of tactics. His reckless and ill-handled assaults upon the strong works at Vicksburg—so freely criticised on his own side, by army and by press—were but preface of a volume, so bloodily written to the end ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... offer they declined, and as the short rush-light was nearly burned out, and as she had not another ready, she got what is called a cam or grisset, put it on the hearth-stone, with a portion of hog's lard in it; she then placed the lower end of the tongs in the fire, until the broad portion of them, with which the turf is gripped, became red hot; she then placed the lard in the grisset between them, and squeezed it until nothing remained but pure oil; through this she slowly drew the peeled ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... But to the ardent youngsters who fought beneath his banner it was his to give a something priceless and unique—a something glorious to France and never before exampled in her literature. For the distichs of Boileau—'strong, heavy, useful, like pairs of tongs,'—he found them alexandrines with the leap and sparkle of sea waves and the sound of clashing swords and the colours of sunset and the dawn. They were tired of whitewash and cold distemper; and he gave them hangings of brocade ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... think how it would sound in folks' ears when they heard how the brethren of Fountain Abbey scampered away from a strolling friar, like the Ugly One, when the blessed Saint Dunstan loosed his nose from the red-hot tongs where he had held it fast; but when they had crossed the crest of the hill and the inn was lost to sight, quoth the fat Brother to the thin Brother, "Brother Ambrose, had we not better mend ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... came to a house that took only twenty-five pounds Bill would let him carry it in with the tongs—unless it was one where Bill, a knightly person, chanced to sustain more or less social relations with the bondmaid. And you could chip off pieces of ice to hold in your mouth, or cool your bare feet in the cold wet ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... hurried off on their several errands. The heifer was brought in from the plain, and Telemachus's crew came from the ship; the goldsmith brought the anvil, hammer, and tongs, with which he worked his gold, and Minerva herself came to accept the sacrifice. Nestor gave out the gold, and the smith gilded the horns of the heifer that the goddess might have pleasure in their beauty. Then Stratius and Echephron brought her in by the horns; ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... present eyed her in astonishment. She saw the log advance, and before any one could check an unexpected movement which seemed prompted by a kind of delirium, she bounded from her bed, seized the tongs and threw the coal back into the fireplace. The nurse, the doctor, the relations rushed to her assistance; they took the dying woman in their arms. They put her back in bed; she laid her head upon her pillow and after a few minutes died, keeping her eyes ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... Earl of Montaigne and Cornwall: Mayfield, was possessed by the see of Canterbury before the Norman conquest, and at its palace Sir Thomas Gresham lived in sumptuous style, and probably entertained Queen Elizabeth in one of her progresses; among the curiosities here the anvil, hammer, and tongs, which are traditionally said to have belonged to the noted St. Dunstan, "and, who is also said to have used the last instrument most ungallantly, and even brutishly, in twinging the nose of Old Nick, who tempted the immaculate prelate in the form of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various
... loud, now low, They raise a tempest, or they gently blow; In hissing flames huge silver bars are roll'd, And stubborn brass, and tin, and solid gold; Before, deep fix'd, the eternal anvils stand; The ponderous hammer loads his better hand, His left with tongs turns the vex'd metal round, And thick, strong strokes, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... and Tommy Staytape armed himself with the goose—a deadly weapon, whoever may get a clour with it—and Benjie took the poker in one hand, and the tongs in the other; and out we all marched briskly, to make the Frenchman, that was locked up from the light of day in the coal-house, surrender. After hearkening at the door for a while, and finding all quiet, we gave a knock to rouse him up, and see if we could bring any ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... would beat me for no reason. I used to get so tired working hard, and then she would beat me. She beat me with thick sticks of fire-wood. She would lay me on the bench, lift my clothes, and beat me on the back. Another day she would beat me thus with the fire tongs. One day she took a hot flat-iron, removed my clothes, and held it on my naked back until I howled with pain. (There was a large scab on her back from this burn when she came to the Mission.) The scars on my body are proof of my bad ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... bedroom, which was as prosaic a place as all furnished apartments are, and approached the fire, where curling-tongs of all dimensions were heating, while from the adjoining laboratory, separated from the bedroom by an Algerian curtain, the Marquis de Monpavon submitted to the manipulations of his valet. Odors of patchouli, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... can best be inserted in the fire or other situation where an observation is desired, and withdrawn for immersion by means of long, slender tongs, with jaws resembling ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... instruments, such as all furnace workers employ, compels a certain dignity and grace of poise and action, we know not; but certain it is that the grace is there in a marked degree, and as we watched the men take their long-handled iron tongs and place in or lift out the plates of hot metal, we could not fail to be impressed with the charm of the physical action ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... with mutual affection, till they reached the edge of the campus, when the others saw the Twins suddenly loose their hold on each other, and fall to, hammer and tongs, over some quarrel whose beginning the ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... garden fence bends beneath the weight of carpets, blankets, cloth cloaks, old coats, under petticoats, and ragged breeches. Here may be seen the lumber of the kitchen, forming a dark and confused mass for the foreground of the picture; gridirons and frying pans, rusty shovels and broken tongs, joint stools, and the fractured remains of rush-bottomed chairs. There a closet has disgorged its bowels—riveted plates and dishes, halves of china bowls, cracked tumblers, broken wineglasses, phials of forgotten physic, papers ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... uncomfortablest acme of luxurious comfort that any Diogenes was set into in these late years." Thoreau's furniture at Walden consisted of a bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, a looking-glass three inches in diameter, a pair of tongs, a kettle, a frying-pan, a wash-bowl, two knives and forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a japanned lamp. There were no ornaments. He writes, "I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... the girl had withdrawn, and the old man stood within the door. 'What! You're hammer and tongs, already, you two?' he said, coolly stroking his face. 'I thought you would be. I was pretty ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... any questions, I opened the mouth of my haversack and poured into it the dripping contents of the skillet. I next observed that the ashes on the hearth had a suspiciously fat appearance, and, taking the tongs, began raking among them. My suspicions were verified, for two plump-looking hoe-cakes came to light, which were also deposited in ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... door—nothing; that encouraged me. The shutters of the ground floor were closed: I passed my stick between the two, I forced them, I entered through the window into a chamber; there was some fire in the fireplace; this served as a light; I saw a chest from whence the key had been taken; I took the tongs, I forced the drawers, and under a heap of linen I found the treasure, wrapped up in an old woolen stocking; I did not amuse myself by taking anything else; I jumped out of the window and I fell—guess where? ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... that is so particularly unbecoming. You begin to wonder at what time during the day it commenced to unbend, and if you have had that melancholy, damp appearance many hours. Perhaps it is as well that you did not know before, for it could not have been rectified; you cannot bring a pair of tongs and a spirit-lamp out of your pocket and begin operations in public! Still it is exceedingly aggravating if you think you have been making an impression, and you return home to confront such a dejected-looking spectacle as you find ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
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